Not at all persuaded by Donald Trump’s request to keep special counsel Jack Smith’s immunity appendix under wraps until after the 2024 election, the former president’s Jan. 6 judge on Thursday scoffed at the “oxymoronic proposition” that hiding information from the public for political reasons will enhance its “understanding of this case.”

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan on Thursday refused to grant Trump a stay extension until Nov. 14, meaning that on Friday the stay will lift and she will “direct the Clerk of the Court to docket the Appendix, with the Government’s proposed redactions.”

Remember when Jack Smith clashed with Judge Aileen Cannon in the Mar-a-Lago case over the naming of witnesses? Donald Trump’s lawyers do, and now they’re asking the judge in the Jan. 6 case to order the special counsel to explain his alleged “about-face” in an apparent defense bid to prevent “sensitive witness statements” from spilling out before the election.

Just one week ago, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, over the defense’s protestations, allowed the special counsel to submit an immunity brief under seal that could span 180 pages or more.

The special counsel can “redact, substitute, or delete” two categories of classified information and “most” of a third category from shareable discovery, the judge in former President Donald Trump’s Espionage Act prosecution ruled Friday.

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon wrote that Jack Smith’s motions prevailed as far as categories 3 and 4 are concerned — the first dealing with “documents relating to a potential government witness” and the second with “classified information which the Special Counsel seeks to delete from discovery in its entirety.”

Cannon also granted “most of the Category 2 requests,” but not all.

“Category 2 contains a subset of After-Action Reports (‘AARs’) and related emails from which the Special Counsel seeks to redact limited words and phrases,” she wrote. “The vast majority of the requests are not topically related to the charged documents and thus neither relevant nor helpful to the defense. A very limited number of redaction requests, however, cannot be resolved at this stage.”

The government witness known in court documents as “Trump Employee 5” and now known publicly to be longtime former Mar-a-Lago valet Brian Butler shed more light on what went on behind closed doors when he sat for interviews with the Special Counsel’s Office and testified before the grand jury that went on to indict the former president.

Revealing that he met with special counsel Jack Smith’s office up to five times over a period of months, Butler told NBC News that the grand jury setting was a “dark” closet-like room filled with roughly 20 grand jurors. Prosecutors “were interested in everything” he had to say during interviews, Butler added.

That may not have been the case for at least one of the grand jurors, however. Butler said he “could see their eyes shut.”

Butler also appeared Wednesday on MSNBC’s “The Beat with Ari Melber,” where he revealed that he voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020 but will not do so in 2024.

The erstwhile Mar-a-Lago employee of two decades, as he said in his first public interview with CNN, stated his belief that Trump wanted surveillance video deleted because he knew he wasn’t supposed to have national defense information and knew that the Presidential Records Act didn’t protect him.

“The way I see it, if these were his personal documents or he’s allowed to have these by the PRA, why would you need to ask questions about video footage?” Butler asked. “Why would you possibly move the documents when they are coming to retrieve them. To me, it just doesn’t make any sense. On top of that, why would you put two low-level employees in the position they’re in if he you did nothing wrong and these were your personal documents?”

Pressed as to whether he had witnessed “part of a cover-up,” Butler said: “I think it’s very possible.”

“From what I saw, the questions — why would they ask about video footage, how long it’s deleted for?” Butler asked. “Those are conversations Carlos [De Oliveira] told me he was asked with finding out prior to Walt [Nauta]’s arrival on a secret trip.”

Here, Butler was recounting the details as they appeared in the indictment.

Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira on June 25, 2022, allegedly told Trump Employee 5 that valet Walt Nauta was en route from Bedminster, N.J., to Mar-a-Lago but asked the witness not to tell anyone about the “secret” trip that related to surveillance camera footage.

“DE OLIVEIRA also told Trump Employee 5 that NAUTA wanted DE OLIVEIRA to talk to Trump Employee 4 to see how long camera footage was stored,” the indictment said. “Shortly after arriving in Palm Beach on the evening of June 25, NAUTA went to The Mar-a-Lago Club and met with DE OLIVEIRA at 5:46 p.m. At The Mar-a-Lago Club, NAUTA and DE OLIVEIRA went to the security guard booth where surveillance video is displayed on monitors, walked with a flashlight through the tunnel where the Storage Room was located, and observed and pointed out surveillance cameras.”

Two days later, De Oliveira told another employee — “Trump Employee 4” — that “the boss” wanted the video footage server deleted, the indictment further alleged.

On CNN, Butler recalled helping Nauta load boxes of documents onto a Trump plane headed for New Jersey, documents the witness said he later realized “were the boxes that were in the indictment, the white bankers boxes.” Before he left Trump’s employ and became a witness for the prosecution, Butler counted De Oliveira as one of his “best friends.” Now, he said, they don’t talk anymore.

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“Unconstitutional vagueness,” “Q clearance,” the National Archives’ criminal referral, and the Presidential Records Act figure to feature prominently at a Thursday morning hearing in the Mar-a-Lago case, when Donald Trump’s lawyers will argue for and the Special Counsel’s Office will argue against the dismissal of the Espionage Act indictment.

What to expect and when

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who earlier the week granted the defense more time to respond to special counsel Jack’s Smith pretrial motions dealing with discovery and the “scope of the prosecution team,” put the parties on notice that they should be prepared to reserve a “full day for argument,” starting at 10 a.m. on Thursday.

Arguments will pertain to Trump’s motion to dismiss the Espionage Act indictment based on “unconstitutional vagueness” and Trump’s/co-defendant valet Walt Nauta’s motion to dismiss to case based on the Presidential Records Act.

The Espionage Act

Last Thursday, Smith opposed Trump’s “unconstitutional vagueness” challenge of the indictment both generally and specifically as to count 19.

In their February motion to dismiss on grounds of unconstitutional vagueness, Trump lawyers argued the nineteenth willful retention of national defense information count, relating to an “Undated document concerning nuclear weaponry of the United States,” could not stand. They said the special counsel handed them Department of Energy records “indicating that President Trump maintained the ‘Q’ clearance that is relevant to the document charged.”

This week, as Donald Trump‘s legal sagas plod ahead — and Super Tuesday fast approaches on March 5 — both he and special counsel Jack Smith are on tenterhooks as they await significant rulings that could shape the fate of Trump’s many criminal indictments. But anticipation — and tension — reached particularly new heights in Florida where U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon and Smith went head-to-head.

Law&Crime takes a look at those developments and others in Trump’s cases in Florida, Georgia, Washington, D.C., and New York.

Seeking a ruling that would find him immune from any criminal prosecution when operating under his “official duties” as president, lawyers for Donald Trump have entered their last filing before oral arguments get underway next week in front of the appeals court in Washington, D.C.

The arguments are set for Jan. 9 at the U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Columbia and the historic and hugely significant issue of Trump’s immunity will be considered by a panel of judges including Karen Henderson, Michelle Childs and Florence Pan.